Irish schoolgirl who overdosed on lecturer’s ecstasy begged friends not to call ambulance

A 15-year-old schoolgirl who died of an Ecstasy overdose, found the pills at a lecturer's home. After taking two pills she pleaded with her friends not to call an ambulance because she feared getting into trouble, an inquest has heard.

According to the Irish Independent, Isobel Jones-Reilly and her friends found a whisky bottle that was filled with pink tablets after searching for cannabis at the all-night party at the home of Brian Dodgeon, a university researcher.

The teenager reportedly collapsed in a shaking fit and began to foam at the mouth after she swallowed two of the tablets, but her friends waited an hour before calling an ambulance. Jones-Reilly died in hospital despite receiving eight shots of adrenalin and 28 cycles of CPR.

The court heard that a post-mortem revealed she had an 'extremely high' level of ecstasy in her body, at 9.96 milligrams. Pathologist Doctor Peter Wilkins said a fatal dose ranged from between 0.18 and 5 milligrams.

Dodgeon, 61, a lecturer at the University of London, admitted to four charges of possessing drugs including Ecstasy, LSD and ketamine, a horse tranquilizer. Dodgeon was not at his home at the time of the incident.

A friend of Jones-Reilly told the inquest they found the drugs after a search of the house in upmarket Kensington, west London. The friend, who cannot be named, found a tubelike container in the house with 'numerous bags of pills and powder' inside.

He told the court: 'Issy took one of the pills out of the bag and was looking at it. People were discussing taking them. I was against it as we didn't know what they were.'

The friend said he saw Jones-Reilly take one of the pills with a beer and added that no one forced her to take it. She later told another friend she had taken another one.

In the beginning she seemed fine but later she became sweaty and started pacing in circles.

The friend said: 'Around 3AM she was breathing heavily. She was quite panicky. Her jaw was moving as well. I looked it up on the internet and thought it must be ecstasy. She started to get really hot and sweaty and went upstairs to lay down. We said should we call an ambulance but Issy said no.'

An ambulance was eventually called around 4AM after she had suffered a fit and started foaming at the mouth. By the time paramedics arrived she was already unconscious.

Dodgeon, who owned the house, later admitted the drugs were his and he was sentenced to eight months in prison, suspended for two years, last December.

Guilt ridden, Dodgeon made a suicide attempt by jumping off a flyover a week after Jones-Reilly's death but survived, breaking both his legs.

Dodgeon was a research fellow at the Centre for Longitudinal Studies, part of the University of London's Institute of Education.

In evidence at the start of a three day inquest, Jones-Reilly's mother Lynne Jones told the court she would never have let her daughter go to the party if she had known if was going to be unsupervised.

'I realize now that I was naive. I never asked if adults were going to be there. I just can't understand why people would leave children unsupervised. This is what feels so painful for us. We've gone over and over it since Issy died.'